SLANG WORDS AND THEIR MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES ON JEFF KINNEY’S DIARY OF A WIMPY KID
Chothibul Umam* dan Yuriskia Purnianda**
Abstrak
Penelitian deskriptif ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui tipe-tipe bahasa slang dalam novel “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” oleh Jeff Kinney serta apa saja proses morfologis yang terjadi pada bahasa-bahasa slang tersebut. Novel ini berkisah tentang seorang anak muda yang bernama Greg Heffley. Novel ini dipilih karena benyak berisi ungkapan-ungkapan slang. Hasil dari analisa ditemukan bahwa: pertama, ada dua tipe slang dalam novel ini, yaitu common slang dan in-group slang. Kedua, ada 6 proses morfologis yang ada pada kata-kata slang tersebut, yaitu: inflection, clipping, coinage, compounding, derivation, borrowing, dan multiple processes.
Kata kunci: Bahasa Slang, Tipe Slang, Proses Morfologis Abstract
This descriptive research aims to know types of slang language in “Diary of a Wimply Kid” novel by Jeff Kinney, and the types of morphological process happened in those slang language. This novel tells about a boy Greg Heffley. It is chosen because of containing slang expressions. The findings from analysis show that first there are two types of slang in the novel namely common slang and in-group slang. Second, there are six morphological process in those slang words namely inflection, clipping, coinage, compounding, derivation, borrowing, and multiple processes.
Keywords: Slang language, Slang types, Morphological process
I. INTRODUCTION
Slang is informal vocabulary used mostly in speech by people who know each other well.1 It is non-formal or casual spoken language created and used by people in a certain community. Slang words may change in meaning, have varied meanings at any one time, and usually originate from social groups.
They are used instead of everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests.2 For these groups, slang is a private code that embodies their particular values and behavior and reinforces their exclusivity. It can be used by insiders who share ideas and attitudes as a way of distinguishing themselves from others.
*Dosen STAIN Kediri
**Alumni PBI Jurusan Tarbiyah STAIN Kediri
1Michael Swan, Practical English Usage, (United Kingdom:
Oxford University Press, 2005), Pp. 526.
2George Yule, The Study of Language, (USA: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Pp. 211.
Youths usually use this kind of language in informal situation or place like home, school, university, market, and so on. Sometimes, they create new word from their own language and it can be understood only in their community.
This kind of language variety is designed to make speech more casual and playful.
Teenagers give the great contribution in the formation of slang words. They form a new word which is only understood by their community.
It can be a characteristic of a certain group or community. When they feel bored to use the common language, they need something new in speaking with other. In this case slang may be the answer of their need. They use slang to communicate freely. They create new word and they use it often and it becomes their daily language. Slang introduces the new word to enrich the language vocabularies as communicating the old word with the new meaning. Slang plays several functions for
these youths.3 Slang may help them to fit in with the group and to exclude passers-by from their conversation.
In this modern era, slang expressions are easily found. Previous studies showed that the investigation of slang expressions had been conducted in some objects; magazines, movies, songs, etc. The result shows that those objects contain many slang words. It shows that now slang has been commonly used anywhere. However, the investigation of slang in novel is rarely done. That is why, in this study, the researchers choose novel as their object in analyzing slang. Novel is one of the sources of entertainment which is popular among students, college students, or teenager.
There are many terms of slang in the novels.
However, it is hard to find the meaning of slang in the dialog or statement because the words are unfamiliar.
In this research, the researchers analyzed a novel entitled “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” by Jeff Kinney. The novel is one of the best seller novels in 2007 in New York. The novel tells about a young boy mamed Greg Heffley who is generally dissatisfied with his lot in life. He is stuck between a spoiled younger brother and an older brother who regularly victimize him with pranks. He is surrounded by “morons” at school his socially oblivious “best friend” Rowley. He is not popular, his parents are clueless, and his passion for violent video games is frustrated at every turn. Doing research about slang in the novel would give the positive contribution for the learners. Besides finding the slang words in the novel, the writer will also know how those slang words are morphologically formed.
II. METHOD
The qualitative study is conducted by analyzing a novel, the most common form of literary works. It tries to identify the types of slang expressions and the morphological processes used in Jeff Kinney’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”. The research instrument of this study is the
3Julie Coleman, The Life of Slang, (United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2012), Pp. 3.
researchers theirselves because they analyzed the data by themselves. They find, collect, interpret, and analyze the data by themselves.
The primary data source of this study is Jeff Kinney’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”. This novel is the source of the data; slang words. While the data itself is specified in utterances in monologues, narrations, and dialogues in the novel.
In collecting and anlyzing the data, several steps were accomplished by the researchers.
Firstly, to fully understand the whole story, the whole pages of the novel was read carefully for three times. Afterward, slang expressions as the data in the novel were identified. In analyzing the slang words and phrases, the researchers were equipped with two dictionary of slang; “The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang”
by Tony Thorne4 and “The American Slang Dictionary” by James Maitland.5The data, slang expressions, were then categorized based on Mihalicek and Wilson’s types of slang, i.e., common slang and in-group slang. Besides, the data were categorized into how the words are morphologically formed by referring to Yule’s theory of word formations processes. Lastly, the conclusion was made.
III. RESEARCH FINDING A. Literature Review 1. Slang
Slang, a very informal kind of vocabulary used mostly in speech by people who know each other well (Swan, 2005),6 is language selected for its striking informality and is consciously used in preference to proper speech. Almost everyone uses slang on some occasions, but it is not easy to define the word. Slang, according to Fromkin, et al., is “One of those things that everybody can recognize and nobody can define”.7 Slang is words and phrases used
4Tony Thorne, Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, (Spain: A &
C Black Publishers Ltd, 2007), Pp. 1-494.
5James Maitland, American Slang Dictionary, (Chicago: R. J.
Kittredge & Co., 1891), Pp. 1-308.
6Michael Swan, Practical English Usage, Pp. 526.
7Victoria Fromkin, David Blair, and Peter Collins, An Introduction to Language, (Australia: Harcourt Australia Pty Ltd, 1999), Pp. 421.
in casual speech often invented and spread by groups. The slang or colloquial language introduces many new words into the language by recombining old words into new meanings.
Slang words and phrases are often invented in keeping with new ideas and customs.
Slang is often compared to jargon. Jargon is specialized vocabulary used by those inside established social groups, whereas slang is more typically used among those who are outside established higher-status groups.
Slang, or ‘colloquial speech’, describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests.8 It can be used by those inside a group who share ideas and attitudes as a way of distinguishing themselves from others. As a marker of group identity during a limited stage of life such as early adolescence, slang expressions can ‘grow old’ rather quickly. Older forms for ‘really good’
such as groovy, hip and super were replaced by awesome, rad and wicked which gave way to dope, kickass and phat. A hunk (‘physically attractive man’) became a hottie and instead of something being the pits (‘really bad’), the next generation thought it was a bummer or said, That sucks!.
The difference in slang use between groups divided into older and younger speakers shows that age is another important factor involved in social variation.
2. Types of Slang
According to Mihalicek and Wilson in their book “Language File: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics”, slang, like jargon, has to do more with stylistic choices in vocabulary than with systematic lexical differences between varieties. Unlike jargon, words that are considered “slang” are often less formal than other equivalent words. There are two basic types of slang; common and in- group:9
8George Yule, The Study of Language, Pp. 211.
9Vedrana Mihalicek and Christin Wilson, Language File: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics, (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2011), Pp. 412.
Common Slang
The nearly neutral everyday language that most people consider just a little too informal for letters of application and the like is known as common slang. Common slang is very familiar in everyday activity. This kind of slang is often used by people in their everyday activity like when they have conversation with another person. So, the meaning of the common slang words is known by every person, not just some people in a group because it is often used by every person. That is why it is called common slang. The examples of common slang include words like fridge for refrigerator, TV for television, wanna for want to, and gonna for going to.
In-group Slang
In-group slang is the more specialized slang of a particular group at a particular time.
In-group slang, like technical language, can be used to keep insiders together and to exclude outsiders. Learning the appropriate in-group slang can thus be a key to entrance into a particular group. So, in-group slang is mostly used by people in a group in order to keep their conversation. And the meaning of the slang word they said is just known by the people in their group.
Some slang is very short-lived like Twenty- three skidoo, but some lasts long enough to become accepted in even the stuffiest circles.
Fan appeared as a slangy shortening of fanatic in the late sixteenth century and today we have fan letters, fan magazines and fan (web)sites for all kinds of things from baseball stars to rock group. Similarly, the fact that slang often injects a bit of color into otherwise ordinary language means that as the color fades, so to speak, new expressions will be needed.
3. Word-Formation Processes
Word formation processes are the linguistic processes of creating new word or terms. The processes might be from the old words to the new uses without changing the meaning or it may create completely new words. According to Yule, there are some ways of creating new words, those are etymology, coinage,
borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, backformation, conversion, acronyms, derivation, inflection, and multiple processes.10 Etymology
The etymology of a word refers to its origin and historical development, its earliest known use, its transmission from one language to another, and its changes in form and meaning.
Etymology is the origin and history of a word, a term which, like many of technical words, comes to us through Latin, but has its origins in Greek (‘etymon ‘original form’ + logia ‘study of’).
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the definition of the word disaster is “an occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress;
a catastrophe” or “a grave misfortune.” But the etymology of the word disaster takes us back to a time when people commonly blamed great misfortunes on the influence of the stars.
Disaster first appeared in English in the late 16th century, just in time for Shakespeare to use the word in the play King Lear. It arrived by way of the Old Italian word disastro, which meant “unfavorable to one’s stars.”11
Coinage
Coinage is the invention of totally new words, which are usually, invented in the names of company’s product that become general terms (usually without capital letters) for any version of that product. In this case, the typical process of coinage usually adopts the brand names as common words. Older examples are aspirin that means headache medicine, nylon that means cloth, and vaseline that means lotion. Then more recent examples are Kleenex that means tissue, and Honda that means motorcycle. It may be that there is an obscure technical origin for some of these invented terms, but after their first coinage, they tend to become everyday words in the language.
10George Yule, The Study of Language, Pp. 52-59.
11www.grammar.about.com/od/words/a/Etymologywords.
htm,accessed on 12 November, 2014.
Borrowing
Borrowing is one of the word formation processes to create new words by taking from other language. English has adopted a huge number of loan words from other languages.
Some examples of English loan words are croissant (French), dope (Dutch), lilac (Persian), piano (Italian), pretzel (German), sofa (Arabic), tycoon (Japanese), yogurt (Turkish), as well as zebra (Bantu).
Other languages, of course, might borrow terms from English, as in the Japanese use of suupaa or suupaamaaketto (‘supermarket’) and taipuraitaa (‘typewriter’), Hungarians talking about sport, klub and futbal, or the French discussing problems of le stress, over a glass of le whisky, during le weekend.
Compounding
Compounding is the process of combining or joining two separate words to produce a single form. It is very common in languages such as German and English, but much less common in languages such as French and Spanish.
In German, Lehn and Wort are combined to produce Lehnwort. Common English compounds are bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket and waterbed.
All these examples are nouns, but we can also create compound adjectives (good-looking, low- paid) and compounds of adjective (fast) plus noun (food) as in a fast-food restaurant or a full- time job.
Blending
Blending is another way of combining two words in order to generate a new word.
It is typically accomplished by taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the word. In some parts of the USA, there’s a product that is used like gasoline, but is made from alcohol, so the ‘blended’ word for referring to this product is gasohol (gasoline + alcohol). To talk about the combined effects of smoke and fog, we can use the word smog. In places where they have a lot of this stuff, they can jokingly make a distinction between smog (smoke + fog), smaze (smoke + haze) and smurk
(smoke + murk). Some other commonly used examples of blending are bit (binary/digit), brunch (breakfast/lunch), motel (motor/hotel), and telecast (television/broadcast).
Clipping
Clipping refers to the shortening of the polysyllabic word into a shorter form which usually consists of one syllable only. This is usually beginning in casual speech. The term gasoline is still used, but most people talk about gas, using the clipped form (gas). Other common examples are ad (advertisement), bra (brassiere), cab (cabriolet), condo (condominium), fan (fanatic), flu (influenza), perm (permanent wave), and pub (public house). English speakers also like to clip each other’s names, as in Al, Ed, Liz, Mike, Ron, Sam, Sue and Tom. There must be something about educational environments that encourages clipping because so many words get reduced, as in chem, exam, gym, lab, math, phys-ed, poly- sci, prof and typo.
Backformation
Backformation is the process of forming a word in the different part of speech. Typically, a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form another word of a different type (usually a verb). Back formation is the process by which new words are formed by the deletion of a supposed affix from already existing word.
Example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into use and then the verb televise was created from it.
Other examples of words created by this process are: donate (from ‘donation’), emote (from
‘emotion’), enthuse (from ‘enthusiasm’), liaise (from ‘liaison’) and babysit (from ‘babysitter’).
Conversion
Conversion is a change in the function of a word, as for example when a noun comes to be used as a verb (without any reduction).
Other labels for this very common process are
‘category change’ and ‘functional shift’. The examples when noun through conversion as a verb are when the number of nouns such as bottle, butter, chair and vacation have come to be
used, through conversion, as verbs; We bottled the home-brew last night; Have you buttered the toast?; Someone has to chair the meeting; They’re vacationing in Florida.
Acronyms
Acronym are formed by taking the initial sounds (or letters) of the words of phrase and uniting them into a combination. Some examples of taking the initial sounds are ASAP (As Soon As Possible) and PIN (Personal Identification Number). Meanwhile, some examples of taking initial letters are NBA (National Basketball Association) and ATM (Automatic Teller Machine). Some words also pronounced as new word such as Radar (radio detecting and ranging).
Derivation
Derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word. These small bits are generally described as affixes.
Some familiar examples are the elements un-, mis-, pre-, -ful, -less, -ish, -ism and -ness. which appear in words like unhappy (happy), prejudge (judge), careless (care), and sadness (sad).
Inflection
Inflection is the creation of different grammatical forms of words. Inflection uses the same sorts of pieces, such as stems and affixes, that derivation does, but the important difference is the linguistic entity that inflection creates forms of words, rather than entirely new words. Typically, in contrast to derivational affixes, inflectional affixes such as –s do not change the lexical category of the word, for example cat and cats, both cat and cats are nouns. Similarly, both wind and winding are considered verbs.
Multiple Processes
Multiple processes happen when some new words made through more than one word formation process. For example, the term deli seems to have become a common American English expression via a process of first borrowing delicatessen (from German) and then clipping that borrowed form. If someone says
that problems with the project have snowballed, the final word can be analyzed as an example of compounding in which snow and ball were combined to form the noun snowball, which was then turned into a verb through conversion.
4. Novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid
“Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is a novel written by Jeff Kinney, published in 2007 by Amulet Books in New York, an imprint of ABRAMS.
It has 217 pages with red color of the cover.
This novel has been turned into a movie with the same title “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” in 2010 and translated into Indonesian language by Ferry Halim, an imprint of PT Serambi Ilmu Semesta in 2009. This novel tells about a story of a young boy, Greg Heffley in a year of his new middle school. Greg Heffley who is generally dissatisfied with his lot in life, he is stuck between a spoiled younger brother and an older brother who regularly victimizes him with pranks, he is surrounded by “morons”
at school his socially oblivious “best friend”
Rowley, he is not popular, his parents are clueless, and his passion for violent video games is frustrated at every turn. This novel has an interesting story and gives some moral values for the readers. This novel is suitable for any ages, from children to adults and will never make them get bored.
B. Findings
The presentation of the findings of this study are made bades of two objectives of the research. That is to know the types of slang words used in Jeff Kinney’s diary of a Wimpy Kid as well as to find out the types of morphological processes occuring in those slang words.
1. Types of Slang in “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”
In this novel, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the total of 89 slang words and phrases were found out.
They comprise 66 common slang and 23 in- group slang.
Common Slang
Common slang is the nearly neutral everyday language that most people consider
just a little too informal.12 Common slang is also the words that very familiar and often used by people in their everyday activity. So, the meaning of the common slang words is known by every person, not just some people in a group because it has been common. In this novel, 66 common slang words were found.
Based on their part of speech, those 66 slang words can be categorized into noun, verb, and adjective in which they consist of 31 verbs, 25 nouns, and 10 adjectives.
a. Verb
There are 31 verbs categrized into common slang. Those verbs convey action, occurrence, and state of being in every sentence. When those verbs are classified based on the functional expressions, the words function to express annoyance, anger, joke, happiness, hope, and curiousness. The followings are the details of the slangs words found in Diary of a Wimpy Kid based on their functional expressions.
The result of analysis shows that some of the words found function to express annoyance.
The characters in the novel use slang verbs scrambling, hang out, dumps, hassling, budge, squirm out, mooch, biting, hassled, swoops, and swallowed to express their annoyance. This conclusion is taken since the characters said those words in annoying condition. For example, the word swallowed, in ‘And guess what? That fool swallowed it’, shows that the character feels annoyed with other character as his friend is doing something that made him annoyed. His annoyance was expressed by saying swallowed which means drink or eat.
Some slang verbs in the novel were used to express anger. Those words are outta, chewing us out, stepped in, bailed us out, shove, and butchered.
The example is the use of the word outta in utterance “Outta my way, runts!”. It indicates that the character is showing anger by saying outta when he is mocked by his friends, while outta is the abbreviation of out of that means go out. It was also found 4 words which function to express joke. They are gotcha, wanna, stretched,
12Vedrana Mihalicek and Christin Wilson, Language File, Pp. 412.
and pooped. These 4 words were used in a joke condition. The example is the word pooped in
“Hey, Mr. Ira, you pooped your pants again”. It shows that the character jokes with his friends to make his friends laugh because he said to his friend that he was pooped which means take an excrement or defecate.
Several slang words were used by the characters in the novel to express their feeling of happiness, hopefulness, and curiousness.
The words gonna, flunking, hook me up, and psyched were used to express their happiness like in utterance “So, this book is gonna come in handy”. The words dusted, brag, crash, and hop off were used to express their hopefulness, such as the word hop off in “I was just praying the curtains would go down so we could hop off the stage”. Expression of curiousness can be found, for instance, in the untterance “Can I peek at your infection?” in which the word peek means to peep or see.
b. Noun
The result of the analysis shows that 25 slang words discovered are labelled as noun, word that functions as the name of some specific thing or set of things, such as living creatures, objects, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.13 Based on the researchers’ analysis, those words are used by the characters to express their annoyance, anger, happiness, and joke.
Nouns expressing annoyance can be found, for example, in the words spurt, heck, noogies, heels, perk, brick, chewed out, and punk. It can be seen when on of the characters said “You are lucky punk!” in which the punk means useless person. It happens when he wants to meet his friend to get something but he could not meet him. The analysis also found nouns expreesing the feeling of anger (like the words jerk, dork, cops, bone and nap). It can be seen in utterance
“All I need is for some jerk to catch me carrying this book around” in which jerk means a foolish or obnoxious person. Such situation occurs when the character is mocked by his friends. Five
13www.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun, accessed on 5 May, 2015.
slang nouns expressing happiness were found in this study (jocks, pop, bucks, hang, and reps).
The word jocks in ‘We jocks just need an air pump to inflate our only football’ shows that the characters are happy since they feel proud of themselves of being jocks which means athlete. In addition, some slang nouns expressing joke can also be in this study, for example: butt, freckle, typo, and booger. It can be seen, for example, in ‘Wanna see my secret freckle?’ in which freckle means anus. This spoken expression was produced by the character to make his friend laugh.
c. Adjective
Ten slang words found in the novel were labelled as adjective, word describing something, the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified.14 Slang words in this category are used by the characters to show annoyance, anger, and showing flat expression. The characters in the novel use the adjective slang words heavy, cranking, cranky, spooky, cocky, ripped, freak, and bust to express their annoyance. The example is the word cocky in utterance “That’s when we started getting cocky”. It shows that the character annoyed with his friend because his friend is doing something that made him annoyed. So, he was annoyed and did something cocky, while cocky means pert or impudent.
In-group Slang
In-group slang is the second type of slang found in this study. This type of slang is the more specialized slang of a particular group at a particular time.15 In-group slang can be used to keep insiders together and to exclude outsiders. So, in-group slang is mostly used by people in a group in order to keep their conversation. The meaning of in-group slang words they said are just known by the people in their group. In the novel “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”, it was found 23 in-group slangs. In-group
14www.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective, accessed on 5 May, 2015.
15Vedrana Mihalicek and Christin Wilson, Language File., Pp. 412.
slang here is the group of the main character Greg Heffley with his friends. It is the teenager group because Greg used those slang words or phrases with his friends in the school. Then, the researcher categorizes those in-group slang words based on their parts of speech.
Those are noun, verb, and adjective. In this in- group slang, there are 9 nouns, 8 verbs, and 6 adjectives.
a. Noun
In the novel “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” by Jeff Kinney, there are 9 nouns in in-group slang type. The characters used the slang expressions to show annoyance and flat expression. The characters in the novel use the words hoop, cooties, boo, rumble, and prank to express their annoyance. As the example is the word cooties in utterance “It’s basically like the Cooties”. It shows that the character annoyed with his friend then he said the word cooties that mean a head or body louse. Besides, the characters in the novel use the words physed, gee, pant, and crumbs to express their flatness. Those 4 words include to the slang with noun parts of speech that are used to express flatness because the characters said those words in a flat condition when he was with the other characters. The example is the phrase physed in utterance “Today we had physed”. It shows that the character is just said to his friend that they will have physed today in which physed is the abbreviation of Physical Education.
b. Verb
In this in-group slang type, 8 verbs were found. The characters used those slang verbs to express annoyance and expectation. They used the 6 words bugs, backfired, blubbering, toss, piped up, and chew it to express their annoyance. As the example is the word bugs in utterance “But the thing that bugs me the most about Manny is the nickname he has for me”. In this case, bugs means annoying. Besides, the characters used 2 slang verbs to express expectation. The characters in the novel use the words sticking and peg to express their expectation. For example, the word peg is used in utterance “Getting to peg Patty Farrell with apples in front of a live audience
would be my dream comes true”. It shows that the character hopes that he could peg his friend in front of live audience in which peg means to take down.
c. Adjective
In the novel “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” by Jeff Kinney, there are 6 adjectives in in-group slang type. The words are used by the characters to show their annoyance, happiness, and expectation. The characters in the novel use 3 words; bugged, gross, and ticks me off to express their annoyance. The example is the use of word ticks me off in utterance “And what kind of ticks me off is that Chris smokes at least a pack of cigarettes a day”. In this case ticks me off shows annoyance. The characters in the novel also use the words handy and breeze to express their happiness. For example, they used the word breeze in utterance “Writing the cards from there was a breeze”. This condition shows the character is happy as he can write a card with breeze in which breeze means easy. Besides, the characters in the novel used the slang word twisted to express their expectation. The word twisted in utterance “But I decided if I don’t want to get twisted into a pretzel for the next month and a half” shows that the character hopes he does not want to get twisted which means intoxicated.
2. Word Formation Processes of Slang in
‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’
In this part, the word formation processes of the slang words in the novel “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” were presented. The researchers analyzed how those slang words are morphologically formed. In anayzing the data, the researchers used Yule’s category.16 There are 6 processes in the formation of slang words found in this novel; inflection, clipping, compounding, derivation, borrowing, and multiple processes.
Inflection
One of morphological processes of slang words found in this novel is inflection, the addition of affixes to the base word to show the grammatical contrast (without changing the
16George Yule, The Study of Language, Pp. 52-59.
lexical category). Among 89 slang words, 24.7%
of them were derived from inflectional process.
The word bucks, for instance, underwent this process. The addition of –s in this word shows the plurality of the noun. The addition of inflectional affix –ed in grabbed functions to show that the word is in past tense.
Clipping
Clipping is the second word formation process of slang words found in this novel.
It is creating a new word by shortening a polysyllabic word. There are 8.9% of slang words derived from clipping found in the novel. The example is the word Phys Ed. It is the shortened or clipped form of Physical Education.
Compounding
Compounding is the process of combining of two separate words to produce a single form. Compounding may be created from noun + noun resulting in noun (book-case), adjective + verb resulting in adjective (good-looking), adjective + noun + noun which results a noun as in a fast-food restaurant, etc 17. In this novel, the word hang-out is one example. It is a verb compound originated from verb + adverb.
Derivation
Among 89 slang words found in the novel, 5.6% of them undertook a derivation process.
It is the process of adding an affix to a base to show the different in meaning and or the lexical category. Among of the examples are cranky and handy. These two words experienced a derivational process. The addition of suffix –y changes the lexical category of hand (noun) becomes adjective (handy).
Borrowing
Borrowing is also found out as one of formation processes of slang words in the novel.
It is taking over of words from other languages.
3.4% of slang words found in this novel is the result of borrowing. The word cooties, for instance, was borrowed from Polynesian word
‘kuty’.
17George Yule, The Study of Language, Pp. 54.
Multiple Processes
Multiple processes happen when the words are produced through more than one word formation process. From the data of slang words found, 12.3% of them were produced through multiple processes. Some example of words experienced this type of process are backfired, reps, and hassled. The word backfired, for instance, is formed from back+fire (compounding) and backfire+ed (inflection).
The word reps experiences a clipping process from reputation and inflection process rep+s.
The word hassled was borrowed from French and it then undertook an inflectional process (the addition of suffix –ed).
C. Discussion
Slang, according to Holmes,18 is a somewhat imprecise term used for colloquial informal or non-standard language. An important motivation for language change is to establish and maintain group identity and cohesiveness on the one hand and to signal its distinctiveness from other groups on the other hand. Macgregor claims that youth and occupational groups often employ some lexical items peculiar to themselves, or give existing lexemes new senses19. Youth slangs or jargons distinguish members from older people because they change so rapidly. But it is more than mere fashion that motivates such lexical changes: the fashion serves to distinguish group members from outsiders.
Referring to the result of this research, the researchers can come to a conclusion that common slang is the type of slang that is mostly used by the people. It is because common slang is more general in meaning than in-group slang. As Mihalicek and Wilson said, common slang is nearly neutral everyday language. So the meaning of common slang is known by everyone, not just some people in a group. The characters in the novel mostly used common
18J. Holmes, An introduction to sociolinguistics, (Essex:
Pearson Education Limited, 2008).
19W. B. Mcgregor, Linguistics: An introduction, (London:
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009).
slang to make their communication run well although they used slang language.
Then, for the classifications of the expression that is used by characters, it does not mean that those expressions just can be used in that way. The slang words that shows one expression also can be use to show another expression if it is used with the different sentences. So, when dividing the expression of the slang words or phrases is depending on the structure of the sentence or utterance. In other ways, gender also gives influence on the use of slang words by male and female teenagers.
Male teenagers tend to use slang words more than females. This is in line with the theory of Dickman and Eagly who argued that males have typical characteristics of authoritarian and socialistic behavior while female are pious, submissive, and domesticity.20 It can be said like that because it proved that most of the slang words and phrases in the novel are said by males character in the novel. Male character used slang more than female character.
The result of this study can be compared to some previous studies. Akmajian, Demers, Farmer and Harnish observe that slang is something that everyone can recognize but no one can define21. Speakers show enormous creativity in their use of slang. Although a precise definition of slang seems extremely difficult, there are however some salient features of this form of language. Firstly, it is a part of casual, informal style of language use.
Furthermore, the term slang has traditionally carried a negative connotation and it is perceived as ‘being low’ and ‘vulgar’ form of language and is deemed to be out of place informal styles of language. Secondly, slang like fashion in clothing and popular music, changes quite rapidly and like fashion the fall out is in a matter of years or even months.
According to Millar, this rate of turnover
20Annisa Salma, “Gender Influence on Slang Used by Teenagers in Their Daily Conversation at School”, Passage, 2013, Pp. 63-70.
21A. Demers Akmajian, A. R. Farmer, & R. M. Harnish, Linguistics: An introduction to language and communication, (New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India, 2008).
is much greater than other areas of the vocabulary of language22. People like to change their speech in much the same way they change their hemlines or neckties. This is particularly noticeable among teenagers for who last year’s clothes and hairstyles can be embarrassing in the same way last year’s speech can also be embarrassing. This awareness is vital since the alternative may be social ostracism.
Akmajian et al observe that specific areas of slang are often associated with a particular social group and hence one can speak of teenage slang, underworld (criminal) slang, the slang of the drug culture and so on. In this respect, slang is a kind of jargon, and its use serves as a mark of membership and solidarity within a given social group. To use out-dated slang or to use current slang inappropriately is to be hopelessly ‘out of date’ and to be excluded from an “in-group”. Slang is sometimes referred to as vernacular (especially when it is associated with a particular social group) and some forms of slang fall under the term colloquialism referring to informal conversational styles of language. These terms, however, do not carry a negative connotation.
According to Ugot, slang use is also of social variation and includes factors of age, ethnicity and even religion23. Different generations of speakers often show difference in speech, for instance in use of slang terms such as buck ‘dollar’ ‘wicked’ ‘good’ cool ‘good, up to date’. Some slang terms such as buck, dwindle (of Shakespeare’s time) end up as standard lexemes. Many on the other hand do not survive for long and their use can be characteristic of a particular generation group, the youth of a certain time. A common characteristic of secret registers (which are confined to certain groups) is that in these registers is the replacement of a lexeme by a lexeme opposite in the meaning or nearly opposite in meaning,
22R. M. Millar (ed), Trask’s historical linguistics, (London:
Hodder Education, 2007).
23Mercy Ugot, “From Slang to Acceptability: Style- Shifting Variation in English Language Usage by Students of CRUTECH”, Calabar, Nigeria. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature. 3 (1), 2014, Pp. 231-239.
commonly expressed in slangs as in wicked and sick for ‘good’.
Pragmatically, “slang” denotes two functional paradigms. One is that it is more utilized in spoken language than written language because of its informal sense of expression. And its usage is situational and belongs to a particular group which is made up of by people with the same sex, age, interest, social and ethnic background, and political tendency. People who come from Ethiopia for example share slangs that particularly originates from their race or ethnic. In other words, slang refers to a kind of spoken language that is commonly acknowledged and unconsciously employed over a wide range of topics when utilized.
In relation to the morphological processes undergone by the slang words found in this novel, six types of processes were found;
inflection, clipping, compounding, derivation, borrowing, and multiple processes. The finding of this study, in some senses, is in line with the result found by Wijana studied the use of English in Indonesian adolescent’s slang. 24 He found out that slang expression in Bahasa Indonesia may take three forms; word, phrase, and sentence. English words exploited as slang in bahasa Indonesia may be in the form of base and complex words, in which the base forms did not undergo morphological processes while, in contrast, the complex ones might be resulted as affixation, internal modification, reduplication, compounding, as well as contraction.
In affixation process, the affix may be taken from Indonesian (e.g., nyemok which means smoking). In Indonesian slang, the reduplication might be full (e.g., walking- walking which means to take a walk) or partial (e.g., hello mellow). A lot of English compound were created from a strongly prohibited literal translation process, like fruit kid, blue blood, or enter wind which respectively mean anak buah (subordinate), darah biru (nobleman), or masuk angin (air sickness). Finally, the contraction
24I Dewa Putu Wijana, “The Use of English in Indonesian Adolescent’s Slang”. Humaniora 24 (3), 2012, Pp. 315-323.
process was formed by creating similar English abbreviation and acronym but different in meaning, like AIDS which refers to anak istimewa dengan sejuta pesona (a special person with a million of wonder).
IV. CONCLUSION
Based on the findings and discussion, two conclusions may be drawn. First, there are two types of slang found in the novel “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” by Jeff Kinney. They are common slang and in-group slang. This fact my show that the author is a creative person because he uses many slang expressions to make his novel more colorful and interesting. The author conveys his idea of story in interesting language variation to make the readers not to get bored with the use of those slang expressions.
Second, there are 6 processes in the formation of slang words found in this novel; inflection, clipping, compounding, derivation, borrowing, and multiple processes.
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